19999
Impact of Perceived Gaze Direction and Duration on Fixations during an Impression Formation Task in High-Functioning Autism
Gaze behaviour is a salient aspect of nonverbal communication in social encounters and is essential for initiating and maintaining interpersonal reciprocity. Moreover, atypical use and interpretation of this nonverbal cue is a specific diagnostic feature in High-Functioning Autism (HFA).
Objectives:
To investigate the impact of the two factors gaze direction and gaze duration on gaze behavior during an impression formation task in an observer, we determined the fixation frequencies of individuals with HFA in comparison to those of matched typically developed controls while they performed an impression formation task. Impression formation, a concept much less investigated in HFA (compared to that of Theory of Mind, which requires inferences about another's mental states), implies that inferences about another's social traits have to be made.
Methods:
For the present study, the stimulus material used were dynamic computer-generated characters, that displayed either averted or direct gaze of varying durations (1 s, 2.5 s, 4 s). While the participant’s eye-movements were recorded using eye-tracking technology, they were required to evaluate the likeability of the virtual faces on a four-point rating scale.
Results:
Behavioral ratings revealed that HFA participants showed no significant difference in likeability ratings depending on gaze duration, while the control group rated the virtual characters as increasingly likeable with increasing gaze duration. Furthermore, the analysis of the eye-tracking data showed that individuals with HFA explored the presented stimuli in a similar manner, compared to control participants. This results contribute to the ongoing debate in the literature on the circumstances under which individuals with HFA actually present atypical fixations of another’s face.
Conclusions:
The present findings suggest that, in the case of an impression formation task, where the social information is conveyed facially and with the explicit instruction to form an impression, individuals with HFA show similar scan paths compared to typically developed participants.